Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
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Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
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Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#2Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by:
- Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
- Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets.... (don't get me wrong, I love meat, but I also love a habitable planet that can sustain the current population...)
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#3Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
If we just rate things better by calories we will enter a negative feedback loop where something is always better until we are all eating some synthetic sludge. Not saying you don’t have a point but we should aim to have our cake and eat it or else the future will just be worse and leave people with nothing to hope for.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#4Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
It will be hard to give up my fertilizer-fed beef.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#5Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture.
If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land into still unsuitable land (but now growing human-edible crops) because somebody thought this was a good idea.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#6Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
It will be hard to give up my fertilizer-fed beef.
(1) [Thing] is bad for the world
(2) But I want it.
This is the recipe for the road we are on.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will be hard to give up my fertilizer-fed beef.
(1) [Thing] is bad for the world (2) But I want it. This is the recipe for the road we are on.
If eating meat were bad for the environment, all predators who eat exclusively large prey would be extinct. We can have a discussion about how much meat per year production is sustainable, but I'm not going to start eating bugs.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#8Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…
I was under the impression that a significant percentage of cattle was not fed purely from pastures. Perhaps this what GP's comment was about?
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#9Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…
It doesn't need to be turned into farmland, we need to stop using existing farmland to grow feed for livestock, which is where so much of it goes.
Re: Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security
#10Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
If we just rate things better by calories we will enter a negative feedback loop where something is always better until we are all eating some synthetic sludge. Not saying you don’t have a point but we should aim to have our cake and eat it or else the future will just be worse and leave people with nothing to hope for.
Vegetarian diet somehow equals synthetic sludge and nothing to hope for?! Sorry if that mischaracterizes your point, but it does seem that's the slippery slope you were going for.